Author: shelbyhack06

I used Fakebook to create my summary for learning for #ecmp355. I had so much fun creating my fake profile. Check it out here

I forgot that Screencastify only lets you record for a maximum of 10 minutes. I wanted to talk about Carol Todd and how much Amanda’s story has impacted me. Therefore, I will talk about it here.

I heard that a young girl from B.C had taken her life due to bullying, but I was not aware of the full story. When I watched The Sextortion of Amanda Todd, my eyes definitely opened. I had no idea that men drove a young girl to take her own life because of constant threats to reveal her body. I have learned that the internet can be a dangerous place and we have to know how to protect ourselves and our identity. I have become passionate about cyber bullying and internet safety because of #ecmp355, Carol Todd, and Amanda Todd Legacy. I will teach my students how to be safe on the internet and raise awareness for cyber bullying. I give so much credit to Carol and her admin for raising awareness and being advocates for bullying and internet safety. You all have impacted me so much.

#ecmp355 has been an amazing adventure and I cannot wait to take my new learnings into the classroom.

I loved #ecmp355 and I can honestly say that I am sad that it is over. Although it was an online class, I felt that we were all so tight-knit even though we were never altogether in a classroom. My PLN has definitely expanded over the semester. Everyone shared such great resources, ideas, and feedback that I will take away with me and use in my Internship and future classrooms. I would like to share how I contributed to the learning of my classmates and how my PLN has expanded.

Let’s start with Twitter, my new-found love! As I have said time and time again, Twitter is such a great resource. I shared many great articles for my classmates and followers to check out:

I also connected with many great people on Twitter including Carol Todd and Amanda Todd Legacy.

WordPress is also a newfound love of mine, and I find that it is a great way to give and receive feedback and share ideas! Here is how I contributed to the learning of others through WordPress.

I did not spend much time on GooglePlus because I feel that I was benefitting more from Twitter and WordPress, but here is my small contribution. I tried to reach out to my classmates and hear their thoughts on the #saskedchat that I missed, but no dice!

Also during our weekly sessions I felt that I gave some good insight on topics that we were discussing and hope that I was able to help my classmates think about things in a different way.

Overall, I felt that each and everyone of the spring 2016 #ecmp355 contributed to new learnings and I have taken away so much from the class

This week in #ecmp355 we explored coding. I had no idea what coding was until this week, and at first I was not sure how it fit in with education. However, after learning more about it, I believe that coding can be used in mathematics as well as Arts Education, and after reading Amy’s blog post, I have realized that coding can also fit into the ELA curriculum as well.I think coding would be a great tool to implement into the classroom. It can help students to develop problem solving skills and patience. I am a strong believer in allowing my students to express their individualism and creativity and I think this is a great way to do that. I also really liked using scratch because they give you step by step instructions on how to create a project, making it easy for first time users. Another aspect that I find interesting is you can check out other peoples projects that they have shared.

I decided to make a scratch project by using the Scratch website. The process was quite interesting and not as hard as I thought. I jumped right into it and this is what I came up with! For just a quick glance at what this process looks like, check out the picture below.

We were also introduced to a few other sites including Code.org where people can participate in Hour of Code. I encourage everyone to try it, its fun! Another website that we were exposed to was Code Academy and I suggest exploring the website as they have a lot of helpful tools on it.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed learning about coding and have plans to implement it into my classroom!

Technology has changed tremendously over the years. With this change, social media sites have become very prominent. As educators it is essential that we teach our students the benefits of the internet and technology, as well as the downfalls. With the downfalls, we must also educate our students on how to be safe while using the internet. In my #ecmp355 class we learned about digital citizenship and what it means to be a safe and responsible contributor to the internet. Ribble’s 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship were very helpful in describing the aspects of #digcit. During one of our classes myself and a couple other classmates were asked to take a deeper look at Element #6 :Digital Law. This is what the website describes as digital law:

Plagiarism is a huge problem in schools and universities, and my group talked about the importance of teaching our students what plagiarism is, the consequences of plagiarizing and how to properly use and cite information. Another aspect of digital law that we talked about was stealing someone else’s identity. This actually happened to my grandfather. Someone made a Facebook profile that was identical to his original one, added all of his friends, and messaged them asking for money. The internet can be a scary place sometimes and young people need to understand this from the get go. If anyone ever has the same issue that my grandpa did, follow these steps.

We were also asked to check out the sask curriculum to see if there were any outcomes and indicators that fit in with digital citizenship. This is what I found:

Health

USC6.1 Analyze the factors that influence the development of personal standards and identity, and determine the impact on healthy decision making (including cultural norms, societal norms, family values, peer pressures, mass media, traditional knowledge, white privilege, legacy of colonization, and heterosexual privilege).

-Here, students can explore what identity is and how the media and internet can influence a persons identity. In regards to the nine elements, I believe this would fit under #8 Digital Health and Wellness.

USC8.4 Demonstrate an understanding of the impact of violence (including but not limited to emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, and neglect) on the well-being of and the supports needed for self, family, and community.

-This is a big one for me. After watching numerous documentaries about Amanda Todd, it is important to teach young people that abuse can happen over the internet. There are many internet stockers out there and young people, especially young women, need to know the consequences of certain internet chat sites.

ELA

CR7.4 : View and demonstrate comprehension and interpretation of visual and multimedia texts with specific features (e.g., circle graphs) and complex ideas including the visual components of media such as magazines, newspapers, websites, reference books, graphic novels, broadcast media, videos, and promotional materials.

-This outcome fits very well into digital citizenship and element #4 Digital Literacy.

CR8.4 : View critically and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of visual and multimedia texts including videos, television broadcasts, informational presentations, dramatic presentations, websites, and news programs to locate and interpret key messages and details, to develop conclusions, opinions, and understanding, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the text.

– This outcome also falls under element #4 as well as digital law and digital health and wellness. Students can explore and critically analyze viewpoints seen on the internet and form their own values and opinions.

Social Studies

RW8.2 Assess the implications of personal consumer choices.

-For this outcome students can explore online consumerism and how much it has grown over the years. This outcome falls under element #2 Digital Commerce.

PA6.3 Explore examples and explain how people, such as ethnic minority groups, the disabled, youth, and the elderly, may be affected by injustice or abuses of power.

-this outcome also hits home for me because we can take a deeper look at online predators and how they gain a sense of power over young women.

As you can see, it is quite easy to fit digital citizenship into the curriculum. I specialize in middle years therefore the outcomes I listed are only from grades 6-8. However, check out Amy’s blogpost for digital citizenship outcomes for highschool.

This week for my #learningproject, I was inspired by Jessica to expand my horizon and search for apps to help me with my yoga. I had never thought of using an app before, but I am glad I did. I went on a manhunt for the perfect yoga app and came across the Yoga Studio app . It had great ratings on App Store as well as great reviews. So I downloaded it and began to explore. I found many great things and compiled this small list:

it is simple and easy to use. The layout makes it easy to navigate

there are many videos and many sequences to chose from

the videos are all in high definition making it clear and easy to follow

if you have an iPhone, you can connect it to the health app

smart link feature enables you to connect poses that might not naturally lead into each other. This way you see exactly how to smoothly move from one pose to the next

I then decided that it was time to try it out. I headed over to the beginner yoga sequences and started searching for a sequence. I was a little upset that I still consider myself at a beginners level, but then I decided that I should not be hard on myself. I looked back on my first couple of posts, and realized that I had made progress, and that’s all you can ask for!

Below is an example of a sequence.

The woman in the picture talks you through each sequence,in a nice, calming voice.

Another thing that I like about this app is that it shows you each pose that you are going to do in a list, so if you wanted to skip to a particular part of the sequence, you can click on it and it will take you there.

Below is a picture of the sequence that I decided to try. My video would not upload so I decided to take pictures instead!

I decided to show you some of the new poses that I have been working on. This one is called cat pose. I really like this one because it helps with my lower back pain, which I have noticed improvements on since I started this learning project!

This next pose is called half camel. My hand is supposed to be touching my ankle, but as you can see I couldn’t get that far! I felt a good stretch in my abdomen, but this one actually hurt my lower back.

This pose is called crab pose. From looking at some pictures, my body should be in more of a straight line. At the time, it felt like it! Honestly! This pose definitely challenged the core. I compare it to a plank, except it’s like a reverse of it!

This last one is a warrior pose, and although it’s not a new pose of mine, I wanted to share it because it has improved immensely since the beginning of my learning project!

I thought I would end this pose off with a good laugh. I thought my phone had already taken the picture, but I guess not! You also may be wondering why I’m wearing a dress while doing yoga and I feel the need to explain. I will be hopping on a plane soon and didn’t really want to mess up my suitcase trying to find other clothes, so I thought I would give it a whirl in a dress! They always say you should try doing new things….

After I watched the Monica Lewinsky TedTalk, something came to my mind right away: she is so brave. That’s right. I called a woman who had an affair with the president brave. She is brave because she spoke out and told her story after years of being “slut” shamed. For those of you who may not know the story, I will give a recap. In 1998 Monica Lewinsky had an affair with President Bill Clinton at the age of 24. This story emerged when the internet was just starting to get big. As a result, the story spread like wildfire and social media began destroying her. She has been “slut” shamed ever since. I cannot imagine having my face plastered all over the internet with headings filled with hurtful nicknames. She mentions in this article that she does not understand how this whole story started to revolve around her being labeled as a “slut”. She went on to argue that there were two people involved; it was a mutual relationship. Why do women get labeled with such horrific terms in incidents like this? There seems to be a sense of pride that goes along with a male having affairs. Which sounds horrible, doesn’t it?

At the beginning of her TedTalk she mentions that she is mentioned in over 40 rap songs. Well I was interested to see which songs she was in and what was said about her. Looking back, I somewhat wish I didn’t! The things that were said about her were horrible! If you want to take a look for yourself, here is the link. But I warn you that there is offensive language.

Now I want to make it clear that what happened between Monica and Clinton is very wrong. Instead of being stuck in the past and playing blame games, I am reflecting on this story as a thing from the past. What happened, happened. There is no going back and erasing the past, so why keep dwelling in it? It is for that very reason that instead of labelling Monica Lewinsky as a slut, home wrecker, etc, I am labelling her as brave.

The rest of the world can also learn from this story. To quote her “with every click, we make a choice.” Whatever we put on the internet, stays there forever, whether we know it or not. Therefore as an educator I need to ensure that my students know how to properly use the internet. They need to become aware that there are many positives to the internet, as well as many negatives.

I have been feeling very under the weather these past few days. The doctor told me I have a throat infection which doesn’t come as a surprise since I am “blessed” with one every couple of months it seems. Therefore, this week I chose to focus on another simple routine to improve my flexibility. I tried so hard to find a place to set up my laptop or camera in the house to record a video, but I could not figure out a place that would show all of my poses. Each way that I tried it either my upper body or lower body was cut off. So I gave up and decided to take pictures of me doing some of the poses. You can tell I am sick because you can see the roll of toilet paper in the background (ran out of kleenex), and I am wearing my baggy sweat pants.

I came across this morning yoga routine. I started to explore more videos by Tara Stiles and then I came across a great youtube channel called LiveStrong Girl. It has so many great yoga and workout routines as well as many healthy meal and snack recipes.

The yoga routine starts with a forward bend and then goes into a forward lunge like I demonstrate below.

To make it a little more difficult, I reached my arms over my head for more of a stretch.

In the video she also does a downward dog pose, which is one of my favorites. You may be wondering why my title is Downward Cat and not Downward Dog. Well as you can see in my picture below, my cat Dude decided he wanted to do yoga too!

Tara did not finish with a corpse poses in her video, but Dude decided it was a necessary way to finish the sequence off!

I have decided to stick to short videos because I do not think you have to do hours of yoga a day in order to see improvements. Short bursts of activity can be just as beneficial and in some cases more beneficial. And let’s face it, when you have a throat infection you don’t have the energy to get up and do a lot!

I have only have a few weeks left of this learning project and I can’t wait to keep sharing my progress with you!

As the semester is coming to an end, my learning project also concludes. I have had so much fun and good laughs attempting to do challenging yoga poses, and my health has also benefitted from it these last seven weeks. I do not plan on stopping here, however. Not only has this project improved my endurance and flexibility, but it has also helped me handle stress.

If you recall back to my very first #learningproject post, my trusty partner Brooke listed off some yoga poses and I had to come up with my own interpretation of what I thought they meant. Here is the video.

I thought it would be fun to go back and do the actual poses, so here goes nothin!

This first pose is called reclining hero pose. I definitely felt the stretch in my thighs! I actually stayed in this pose for quite some time and I felt so good after!

This is called locust pose. This pose looks simple, but it was actually quite difficult. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a bad back and this pose did not feel the greatest.. but I did it anyways and I think I did pretty good!

This pose is called half-frog pose. If my upper body did not have to elevated, I think this pose would have felt pretty good!

This next one is called dolphin pose. I really felt the stretch in my calves and arms!

This next pose was hard, but was probably my favorite pose throughout this whole learning project. It is called wild thing! …..You make everything, groooooovy. Im sorry, I couldn’t help it.

This pose is called upward solute. It was an easy pose to do, but I still felt a stretch in my back and shoulder blades.

Last but not least, this is called the happy baby pose. I’m not gonna lie, I felt very awkward doing this pose, but it gave me such a good stretch.

There were a couple of poses from the video that I did not try because they were either too hard or I had previously done them.

I am very glad that I chose to do yoga for my learning project. As I have mentioned time and time again, I struggle in dealing with stress and am always finding ways to help manage it. Luckily, doing yoga helps! Throughout this project I have learned that I do not need to do hours of yoga a day in order to see progress. In fact, I found that just doing 5-10 minutes a day did wonders!

My yoga journey does not stop here. I plan to keep mastering the poses that I have demonstrated throughout this project and aspire to keep learning new ones.

If anyone one is wondering what Bodhi Tree is, it is a well known yoga studio in Regina. My title is 100% a joke by the way….

I had the opportunity to participate in my first #saskedchat last thursday. I will be honest, I did not think that I would enjoy it. However, I walked away having many positive things to say about it. I was worried that it would go way too fast and I would be left behind. However, I found it fairly easy to keep up. The only negative thing I have to say is that if you want to keep up, you pretty much have to be focussing on Tweetdeck and nothing else because it does move so quick. The questions that were asked were insightful and were followed with many different replies. It was interesting to see how everyone’s opinions differed and how unique we all are. There were many insightful answers and I definitely learned a thing or two. It was also a great way to meet new people. I connected with a man who teaches in MooseJaw and I was very excited because I will be doing my internship there. Another positive is that it is also a great way to get resources. I thoroughly enjoyed the one hour chat and definitely plan on taking part in it whenever I can.

I have found myself gradually getting stressed and overwhelmed as the week goes on. I am feeling the pressures of the semester wrap up catching up to me. I have been so exhausted trying to balance work with three spring classes as well as all the other aspects of my life. However, I have come to realize that this is only temporary and that I have to learn how to deal with it in the meantime. Therefore, I introduce to you 3 calming yoga poses, showcased by your one and only. Before I began, I made myself some chamomile tea because I’ve read so many good things about it. My first reaction when I tasted it was: well I could just go and boil some weeds..it would probably taste the same. But it is growing on me!

The first pose I did is called the Lotus pose. This one was my favourite out of the three. It promotes inner calmness and eliminates anxiety.

Im not sure if this is the actual name of the pose but this website calls it the legs-up-the-wall pose. This pose helps to calm you because it helps to renew blood and lymph drainage back into the heart area.

The last pose I did was the head-to-knee forward bend. As you can see, my flexibility is pretty much non-existent here, however I feel like it has improved. This website gives you step by step directions on how to do this pose. It supposedly helps to relive mild depression, anxiety, fatigue, and insomnia…so this pose is right up my alley!

I have found blogging to be very therapeutic. Shocking, considering I once found it to be such a drag. I would like to thank Katia for encouraging us to stick with it. And by encouraging I mean forcing us to do it in our classes…in the most loving way of course!

Now that I am relaxed and have released some stress, I’m going to patiently wait for the storm to arrive so it can put me to sleep. I find those to be calming as well. Weird… I know.